I had been, two years before, hit in the face by a snow missile, during one of the snowballing saturnalia the New York roughs indulged in after every fall of snow; in this case the missile was a huge block of frozen snow-crust, which flattened my nose on my face and broke the upper maxillary inclosing all the front teeth.

The fatal effect of dropping the superior maxillary when one intended to drop the inferior, or of applying nervous stimuli to the up track, instead of the down, can easily be conceived.